CERN Accelerating science

Reorganisation of Sun Software Support at CERN

Alan Silverman CN/DCI

Since some time now Sun have been offering a new version of their operating system software for SPARC-based systems, namely Solaris 2.x. However, for a number of reasons (such as unstable early releases, the non-availability of layered software, the overhead of porting existing software), users were reluctant to change. With the arrival of Solaris 2.3 and, especially, Solaris 2.4 this is changing and more and more CERN users are converting.

We thus feel obliged to reorganise slightly our Sun support arrangements. We have created a new support account, solaris.support@cern.ch, and we have arranged for a different method of assigning the allocation of problem solving for Solaris and SunOS. The new structure is as follows

Sun commercial information

E-mail: workstation.frontdesk@cern.ch

SunOS 4 system support

E-mail: sun.support@cern.ch

Solaris 2 system support

E-mail: solaris.support@cern.ch

Note:

a)

Please try only to use e-mail to request help. Do NOT try to contact individuals by phone and especially not by e-mail to their private accounts. Mail to the generic accounts is redirected into an internal problem tracking system which is checked at frequent intervals by various members of the support teams. Mail to a private account risks to remain unread for some time due to the workload or absence of the individual.

b)

If you do not know which of the above support accounts to contact, do not worry; send to the one you believe more appropriate and we will redirect it internally to the correct one if necessary.